Data Consolidation: The Key to a Restoration Contractor’s Success

Owning and operating a restoration business can be a bit hectic at times. Contractors may feel like they’re being pulled in one hundred different directions, and keeping it all together can be difficult. The busy nature of the restoration industry often causes a lot of data sprawl, which can be a severe drain on both productivity and overall profitability.

Not only that, but the restoration industry has changed drastically in the past ten years and continues to evolve. With the introduction of electronic reporting of data, speed is often emphasized over all else, and the amount of data that needs processing will continue to grow. In fact, Michael A. Pinto, chief executive officer of Wonder Makers Environmental, Inc., predicts that “individuals who know how to manage projects and data/documentation efficiently” will be the biggest need in the restoration industry in the coming decade.

Consolidating all your job information is the best way to increase productivity and profitability, but just how can you go about data consolidation?

1. Save Time with Restoration Job Production Reports in One PlaceThe best way to keep a pulse of your restoration company’s job production status is by knowing where each job stands in its life cycle. Having to pull that information from each project manager or different spreadsheets is very inefficient. Many restoration contractors still struggle when they need to run a WIP (work in progress) report.

This is why we developed DASH Enterprise’spowerful dashboards. DASH’s main dashboard enables restoration business owners and project managers to quickly view how the company is doing both from a job status and a financial perspective in a singular view. Having the ability to see the total number of open jobs, how many are in pre-production, work in progress or even invoice pending ensures restorers can utilize the right company resources most efficiently. From a financial perspective, DASH also provides different charts and useful reports on total invoice amounts, revenues versus cost breakdowns and invoicing trends. DASH Enterprise helps track and monitor how your company is doing in real time.

2. Improve Communication by Keeping Job and Customer Information TogetherThe entire restoration industry revolves around people having suffered a loss, which means they’re incredibly vulnerable emotionally. This makes the task of keeping your clients happy incredibly important and challenging if you’re not organized. Constant communication is key. In fact, “Without good communication, there can be no great customer service.” No one likes repeating themselves, especially customers who just suffered a loss.

According to Forbes, poor customer service is costing businesses more than $75 billion a year. A few of the significant reasons for customers ceasing to do business with a company may include:

Customers do not feel appreciated.

Customers are not able to reach a person who can best answer their questions.

Customers experience rude and unhelpful staff.

Customers are passed around to multiple people or departments.

To prevent these types of communication issues from happening, keeping detailed notes and job information well documented in a single platform keeps you structured and organized. With several open jobs, it can be easy to lose a piece of paper or forget a vital job detail. DASH helps the process of documenting and reporting restoration job information incredibly easy. With the native mobile app, DASH enables workers to dictate notes directly into the phone, capture images, create tasks and move equipment all from the field. With a single cloud platform such as DASH, communicating job information from the field to the client in real time is done through a single secure client portal called DASH View. This bridges the communication gap that often happens in jobs. Beyond keeping clients or customers informed, keep your whole company abreast of important job information through a restoration business management platform like DASH.

“Keeping your clients happy is incredibly important.”

3. Recover from a Disaster Quicker with the CloudThere are a few situations where keeping all of your “eggs in one basket” is considered a good thing. Consolidating your job data in the cloud is one of those times. If your office is hit by a catastrophe that impedes your ability to conduct business, there’s a good chance the damage has reached any locally stored information. When you’re trying to get back on your feet, there’s nothing worse than complete and total data loss.

This is why the cloud is seen as incredibly advantageous at helping to mitigate the risks of a disaster. Data stored in a cloud-based platform such as DASH Enterprise can be accessed anywhere at any time, which means that the loss of your office’s computers won’t stop you from continuing operations.